The advantage of doing without scanner, copier and all those extra features is that it keeps the price of your printer down, and the Deskjet 1000’s current price of just £19.99 is hard to beat if you’re on a tight budget. Yet despite the low price the Deskjet 1000 actually performs pretty well.

Text quality is very good, with smoothly detailed text that would give a more expensive laser printer a run for its money. The print speed was pretty good too – right on HP’s estimate of 5.5 pages per minute. Coloured documents were slightly slower at 3ppm, but that still makes it a match for many of its more expensive rivals.

Photo output on plain paper showed some very slight signs of banding, but wasn’t a problem when using the photo papers designed for this purpose. However, the 100 seconds printing time for a 4x6in postcard print makes it clear that the Deskjet is really only suitable for occasional photo prints.

That impression is confirmed by the Deskjet’s running costs. HP’s ink cartridges cost roughly the same as those of its rivals, but the page yields for those cartridges are definitely below average – less than 200 pages for simple black and white documents – and that pushes the printing costs up to almost 7p per page for black and white, and 17p per page for colour documents. To be fair, HP does sell ‘XL’ cartridges and value packs that can cut those costs considerably, but it’s clear that the Deskjet 1000 is really just intended for home users with very light printing requirements.

Needless to say, as well as being a single function inkjet printer, the Deskjet 1000 has neither Wi-Fi nor a memory card slot for printing photos straight from a digital camera.

If you really don’t need a multifunction printer then the very low price tag of the Deskjet 1000 is undoubtedly attractive. Just remember that the higher running costs could mount up over time, so look elsewhere if you’re likely to be using your printer every day.

In a market where competition is fierce to create an affordable yet functional printer that can appeal to even the most casual user, HP has upped the ante by introducing the HP Deskjet D2545, an inexpensive inkjet printer that's also environmentally friendly.

Our review of the HP Deskjet 460wbt Mobile Printer shows that while HP's portable printer isn't huge, and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the Deskjet 460wbt isn't as portable as HP would have you believe.

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Comments

Todd Perry said: The worst printer HP has ever made I do not recommend this printer for anyoneTerrible craftsmanship sub-par parts terrible ink cartridges that fail every time you turn around for this modelI have went through 3 of these in the last 1 and a half years and I do not print that much Get another printer and do NOT waste your money on this junk unless you like to own a large paper weight

Gagan Behniwal said: Its per page cost

Sdsd said: This printer is terrible I bought two of these and in ONE WEEK the printer was collapsed It dont have a real mecanism to clear the cartridged You cant add more than 50 pages Its totally plastic All the other ones include the cheapest one have the important pieces of metal And it splashed ink everyewhere Print quality is bad